Young Woman with a Water Pitcher: A Virtual Reconstruction

In the early and mid 1660s, Vermeer painted a group of closely related work which the art historian Lawrence Gowing called the "pearl pictures" (see box below) in honor of their exquisite facture and for the fact that each work features a pearl necklace. In these compositions the artist made a decisive move away from the cubical interior spaces, which he and De Hooch had brought to near formal perfection, and "adopted an approach that in some respects was closer to that of the Leiden artists Metsu and Frans van Mieris. The preoccupation with linear perspective and geometric order diminished in favor of simpler compositions, in which the view is usually brought closer, only one figure is depicted and the behavior of light becomes the predominant aesthetic concern."¹

fig. 1 Young Woman with a Water Pitcher
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1662–1665
Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 40.6 cm.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The importance given by Vermeer to the planimetric organization of these pictures can be deduced by the numerous compositional alterations which were made in the course of the painting process, some of which have been revealed with the aid of with modern scientific instrument. Such changes are clearly seen in a group of infrared reflectograms² of the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, so much, that Vermeer's initial composition can be reconstructed with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

Aim of the Virtual Reconstruction

The aim of the virtual reconstruction of the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (fig. 1), is not to provide an accurate image of the painting as it once actually appeared, which is obviously impossible, but rather, to form a reasonable hypothesis of the artist's original pictorial concept and, perhaps, reveal why he made the subsequent alterations.

Technical analysis reveals that the background wall map of the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher originally extended to the left behind the woman. In addition, the back of a chair set on an angle was placed in the left foreground and partly overlapped the window. The chair, the use of an open window as a repoussoir device and the bright, local coloring are consistent with Vermeer's style in works dating from the early 1660s.

The changes in Vermeer's composition may have been made during the early phases of the painting procedure,³ called underpainting, before color and detail had been introduced even though the some parts foreground chair seem to have been brought to a high degree of finish. It appears that some light dots of light paint, perhaps Vermeer's characteristic pointillés,⁴ can be made out along the uppermost profile of one of the chair's lion-head finial. In the simplest terms, an underpainting is a monochrome version of a painting (usually executed with brown or neutral gray paint) in which the artist fixes on his canvas the fundamental elements of composition, creates volume and distributes darks and lights in order to produce an overall effect of illumination. The underpainting allows the painter to envision his pictorial idea with a minimum expenditure of time and effort while maintaining control over pictorial unity, one of the principal requisites Baroque painting. The parts of the underpainting that did not live up to the artist's expectations could be immediately observed and corrected with relative ease before moving on to complex problems of color and fine detail.

The present reconstruction of the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher is based primarily upon a group of infrared reflectograms of the painting and Arthur K. Wheelock 's analysis of the technique and expressive content of the work as they relate to the compositional alterations.⁵ By comparing the reconstructed versions to the final version which we now see (part two), we might be able to intuit how the artist "thought through" his pictures and make a few observations as to why Vermeer revised his initial pictorial concept so profoundly.

Changes in Composition

As stated before, during the course of his work, Vermeer made two very significant compositional modifications in Young Woman with a Water Pitcher. Firstly, the background map of the Seventeen Provinces of Netherlands (fig. 3), based upon a known map published in 1671 by Huyck Allart (fig. 2), which was initially extended behind the young girl's head, was moved to the right. The original position of its left-hand contour can be perceived with the naked eye as a barely perceptible shift in tone of the wall slightly to the left of the figure's head. This shift in tone is not always visible in reproductions but is apparent when viewing the actual canvas. The second alteration was the removal of a so-called Spanish chair with lion-head finials, a familiar prop in Vermeer's and Dutch interiors, from the left-hand foreground. The reflectograms also show that the artist had initially depicted the contours of the water basin differently. These last alterations are not accounted for in the reconstruction.

fig. 2 (left) GERMA/NIA/ INFERIOR (The Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands)
Huyck Allart
1671
Four sheets, uncolored, 72.4 x 90.4 xm.
Leiden, University Library, Bodel Nijenhuis Collection

fig. 3 (right) Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (detail)
Johannes Vermeer
c. 1662–1665
Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 40.6 cm.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Above left is a detail of Vermeer"s map as it appears today. To the right is a scaled image of Hyuck Allart's original map on which Vermeer's painted map is based. The section of Allart's map which corresponds to the Vermeer"s map is rendered in lighter shades of gray. If the two scaled maps are superimposed, the fit is quite close.

It is generally held that the Vermeer adhered to the true shape dimensions of the real objects that he pictured in his interiors. As the art historian James Welu has shown, in several cases it has been possible to identify not just the map's designers and publishers, but the specific editions. Not only can the book studied by Vermeer's Astronomer be recognized; the very page at which it is open is legible. The local colors of the objects, instead, are more difficult to judge since the objects habitually represented in Dutch painting, like carpets and clothing, were produced in a variety of colors and furthermore, the pigments are know to have deteriorated and changed color.

As with other maps in Vermeer's paintings (The Lute Player and The Art of Painting) the topographical features and the decorative embellishments of the map of the Young Woman Holding a Pitcher correspond very closely to those of the know map on which Vermeer's rendering is based. Moreover, painters were dramatically limited in their choice of pigments. Only a handful of the so-called "bright colors" were available in the seventeenth century.

More about the map of Netherlands in Vermeer's Young Woman Holding a Water Pitcher

from:
"Vermeer: His Cartographic Sources"
James A. Welu
The Art Bulletin, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Dec., 1975), pp. 529-547

Vermeer's repeated use of maps bears witness to the fact that wall maps enjoyed great vogue as interior decoration. In the seventeenth century, the decorative use of maps became so popular that many publishers began reissuing old maps specifically for this purpose. Such a map appears in Vermeer's Young Woman with a Water Jug. The wall map in this painting can be identified with a map oriented with north to the right of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands, published by the Dutch cartographer Huyck Allart (fl. c. 1650-1675). The only known example of Allart's map, which bears the date 1671, is preserved in the University Library, Leiden. The copper plates Allart used for printing his map of the Seventeen Provinces were not originated by him, but were acquired from an earlier source. Although the origin of these plates is unknown, the date of their initial engraving can be approximated by examining the unrevised geographical contents of Allart's map. The copper plates for Allart"s map were probably first engraved around the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Although Allart's map shows no revision in its geographical contents, it does contain several decorative elements that were added sometime after the original engraving to give this old map a new look. The decorative cartouche (containing the map's graphic scale) located in the lower left corner was not part of the map's original format. This cartouche, which can be seen in Vermeer"s painting, is designed to be viewed from below and to the left and the chiaroscuro on it implies a light from the upper right, whereas the two cartouches directly above are designed to be viewed straight on and the chiaroscuro on them denotes a light from the upper left. The inconsistency between the lower cartouche and the two above, which appear to be part of the map"s original format indicates that the one below is a later addition. In fact, the design for the later cartouche was taken from a much earlier source: a map of Portugal published by Ortelius in 1560. On Ortelius's map this design appears in the position for which it was originally made: the upper right corner. Another later addition to the Allart map is the large ornate cartouche at the upper right. This design, in heavy chiaroscuro, engraved about mid-seventeenth century, is characterized by a variety of naturalistic elements: putti, trumpets, the head of an angel, and several garlands of fruits and flowers all joined together on a shell-like framework. In addition, many of the vignettes of ships and the map's entire ornamental border appear by the style of their engraving to have been added to the map sometime after the original engraving.

The fact that the Allart map had been revised so extensively by the middle of the seventeenth century, in its decorative contents and not at all in its geography, clearly demonstrates that by that time the map was intended primarily as decoration. Allart's map of 1671 was published about a decade after the date usually given to Vermeer"s Woman with a Water Jug (c. 1662). This of course could call for a reconsideration of the date assigned to Vermeer"s painting. Yet to place this work after 1671 seems inconsistent with its style. It is more likely that a state of the Allart map, similar to the 1671 state, was published before the date given to Vermeer"s painting. This earlier state would have appeared sometime between the date of the map"s original engraving, c. 16oo, and the date of Vermeer"s painting, c. 1662. Therefore, even though we know only one original of the Allart map, we can be quite sure that more examples—in fact, several editions—were available during the seventeenth century.

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher
(a virtual reconstruction, first hypothesis)

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher
(a virtual reconstruction, second hypothesis)

The present virtual reconstruction is based partly upon the assumption that while Vermeer later changed the position of the map, he maintained in tact both its original dimensions and the height at which it is hung. In the final version the artist slid, so to speak, the map rightwards until its left-hand vertical contour and rolin ball⁷ became visible to the right of the figure's linen headdress.

As can be noted in the virtual reconstruction, the entire width Allart's map, including the right-hand rolin ball, would have been represented within the perimeters of Vermeer's canvas.

Unfortunately, with the painting in question it is not possible to verify the accuracy of the map's dimensions in respects to those of the real seventeenth-century map through a technique noted as "reverse geometry," used by Philip Steadman to reconstruct a number of Vermeer's interiors. Nonetheless, the London architect and author of Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces, demonstrated that it is not just the geographical detail of the maps and the decorative detail of the chairs that are so precisely represented; their overall dimensions also correspond closely to the originals. In effect, their reconstructed heights and widths are, in all those cases where measurement is possible, within a few per cent of the surviving library copies. It would, therefore, be fairly safe to say the map is portrayed in the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher is portrayed according to its original dimensions and would not likely have been resized to obtain some aesthetic advantage or iconographic nuance.

However, in the case that Vermeer took liberties with the dimensions of the map, such a change in scale should not come as a complete surprise since it is a well-known fact that Vermeer altered dimensions, sometimes greatly, of a few objects represented in his works for aesthetic or iconographic reasons. For example, the cabinet-sized painting of the Finding of Moses to the far right-hand side of The Astronomer has appears far larger when it is represented in the later Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid.

The "Pearl Pictures"

In the early 1660s Vermeer executed four small canvases eloquently named the "pearl pictures" by Lawrence Gowing which are among the artist's most lucidly conceived yet enigmatic works. For the present study, Young Woman with a Water Pitcher has been added to the group, obviously, not with the intention to revise Gowing's well-known term, but because the painting bears important compositional affinities with the four pearl pictures: Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, Woman Holding a Balance, Woman with a Lute and Woman with a Pearl Necklace.

The subject matter of the pearl pictures is restricted to a single woman who momentarily engages in some discreet activity in a left-hand corner of a room, very near a window. While persistent iconographical interpretations seem to have successfully illuminated the story behind the Woman Holding a Balance, the others have resisted interpretative attempts with more success. Nonetheless, a common theme that unites the women's activities might be thoughtful reflection (or distraction).

Four of the five pictures show a slice of a window to the left and four display chairs (a second chair once occupied the lower left-hand corner of the composition of the Young Woman with a Water Pitcher). All the scenes are staged against a simple, white-washed wall set parallel to the picture plane. The particular hue and tonal values of the white-washed walls are key to establishing the direction, intensity and quality of the incoming light and constitute an unsung technical tour de force of the artist's oeuvre.

Even by Vermeer's standards, the scenes of these works are organized with exceptional economy utilizing a table with a single woman, a meager still life, a few carefully chosen props, a map or painting on the background wall and one or two chairs (infrared reflectograms reveal that the original version of Woman with a Pearl Necklace once displayed a large wall map behind the standing girl). All of the movable objects are structurally simple although some are adorned with elaborate decorative elements (ex. Turkish carpets and large wall maps).